It happens regularly. I come across an article that  I want to print- only to get discouraged by all the ads, background and images in the web page. Instead, I bookmark the article and promptly forget about it.

Sound Familiar? 

It drove me insane till I found the perfect solution. Courtesy: a quick firefox add-on search.

PrintWhatYouLike is an excellent service that lets you select only those parts of a web page that you want to print. Here are some options that have made my printing life easy.

• Remove images and backgrounds from a web page 
• Increases or decreases the font of the page according to preference
• Provides the option to save the selected text as a PDF or HTML file
• Has a firefox add-on! Though its in the experimental stages, so far, it’s working fine for me.
• Auto Formats the page for you – and lets you choose whatever text you want to print from that too!
• Lets you print directly from the web page.

What the free service doesn’t let you do is save clips. To save clips you’ll have to register and in the trial version you can only save 2 change sets and 6 clips.

To save more, you’ll have to upgrade to their Pro account which costs $5 per month. It also lets you save changes, snippets and tracks the money and paper you’ve saved by using PrintWhatYouLike. 

The Pro account is for you if you like to keep a copy of your saved stuff online and are trying to keep track of how green your paper trail is.

For an average user (like me) the free version works great. I haven’t signed up for the trial version because the add-on meets all my needs so far.

Verdict: I love it!

Do you use an alternate service? Is so, tell us about it! Or tell us about your experience with PrintWhatYouLike.

Since my post on recording ideas (in which I practically stuffed a pen in your bags/briefcases/pockets), I decided to add something to my pen carrying habit. Instead of just being satisfied at having a pen in my bag, I decided to make sure to take the pen out every time I had a few minutes.

Chasing My Ideas

I added a small book in my tote and stuck a pen in it. I took it out every time I was out, was waiting for something or had a few minutes. I took it out on my way to school, waiting for my class, and on my way back. I even pulled it out while playing scrabble as I waited for other people to complete their turns. I wanted to see if I could make ideas come to me when I called them.

Coming up a Blank the First Time

The first time I took the note book and pen out, all I did was stare at the blank page and finally ended up doodling my name. Not a single thought or idea came to me. The second time, I was getting frustrated again when a thought occurred to me. “What does a person do when brain storming fails?” I wrote it down immediately.

All it Can Take is One Idea or Thought to Open the Floodgates

That thought is still sitting alone on a page. But it catapulted my brain into overdrive. Soon afterwards my brain was flooding with possibilities in answer to that question. Most of them were discarded almost immediately. But the ideas stemming from them took a whole new direction.

Jot Down Everything

Suddenly, I’m filling pages. Not every idea I get is good (actually, most of the are plain mediocre) or even well thought out but I write everything down and go through each point later. What seems like a bad idea today, may present an opportunity tomorrow. “Always remember, one bad idea gives rise to 10 better and at least one great one!” That used to be my father’s mantra every time I would stop myself from voicing an idea saying it was ’stupid’.

My own mantra? Get the bad ideas out as fast as you can and make way for the great ones. Okay, so I may have heard my dad say that one too.

Finally: A Habit Formed

After doing this for the past two weeks, scribbling in my notebook has become a habit. My fingers start to itch if I’m sitting idle for more than a few minutes and stepping out without a notebook is unthinkable!

What do you do? Do you wait for ideas to come to you or do you go chasing after them?

As bloggers, our worst nightmare is waking up one day and finding out that our blog has disappeared. The mere idea is enough to make me break out in a sweat! There are quite a few online services that store back ups of blogs. I found Blogbackupr to be the most hassle free. A quick rundown of its important features.

• It runs over the Internet.
• Requires no installation.
• Stores media, template and images.
• Support WordPress and Blogger.
• Makes daily back ups.

To back up a blog, all it requires is an email address and the blog’s URL. The back up starts immediately after which an email is sent which contains the password. This procedure is as simple as it gets. For a service that’s still in its beta version, it works surprisingly well.

Note: For a blog to be backed up by Blogbackupr, it must have an RSS feed.

I discovered Windows Live Writer a few months ago and have been publishing the base through it. I wasn’t expecting too much from Microsoft’s desktop blogging application when I first downloaded it, but I was in for a surprise! It’s one of the most comprehensive blogging applications I’ve used.

Seamless Transitioning Between Different Blogs

You can add as many blogs as you want and it let’s you access them with a single click. Save your passwords and you’ll be saved from one more step to hinder the process of publishing your blog.

Supports Other Blogging Platforms

While Live Spaces is the first choice it offers, we can add blogs from Blogger, WordPress, TypePad etc by choosing ‘Other weblog services’. All you have to do is provide the blog URL, username and password of the service and it retrieves all the information on its own to set up your account on WLW.

Plug-ins

Windows Live Writer has the option to add different plug-ins to further enhance the blogging experience. Plug-ins that come with the application can insert hyperlinks, pictures, video, tables, tags and maps. Clicking on ‘Add a Plug-in’ leads to a Windows Live Gallery where there are different choices depending on your needs.

To learn about which plug-ins would be most useful to increase your productivity through WLW, check out ‘10 Must have plug-ins for WLW’.

Navigation

One of the best thing about WLW is the easy navigation.Everything is within sight and easy to understand. Formatting also has the same common keyboard function as that of Microsoft Word and other word processing programs.

Different Viewing Options

What stands out in WLW is the different previewing options. We can view our blog post in normal layout which has the usual white background with the post on it. The Web layout has the general outline of your blog page and the Web preview does a quick scanning of your weblog’s template, downloads the settings and stores it to show a preview of how it would look like when published on your blog. The html code view is also there for people who like to tweak their own code.

Works Offline

Last but not the least, is the option to form blog posts and edit them offline. This option was the show stealer for me. We can even have a web preview while we’re offline since it downloads our blog template when we ran the web preview option while online.

Verdict: Whether you’re new to blogging or an old hand at it, WLW is great for all.